GAZA CITY, Feb 24, (AFP): Gaza police have arrested family members over the deaths of two Palestinian teenage girls, one of them the victim of a suspected “honour” killing, Hamas authorities said Monday. Authorities caught relatives of one of the girls as they were trying to bury her in a cemetery near Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, on Thursday, police spokesman Ayyub Abu Shaar told AFP. The girl’s father had “beat her days before her death”, Abu Shaar said.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) said a post-mortem showed signs of “torture” all over the girl’s body as well as signs of untreated gangrene from years of physical abuse. The rights watchdog said the girl was 17. Police also discovered the body of another girl in the southern Gaza district of Khan Yunis in what could be an “honour” crime, Abu Shaar said. “Her brother killed her, and the case is still being investigated. The murder weapon has been found,” he said, without elaborating. PCHR said the girl was 18 and had fatal knife wounds to the neck.